Rules and by-law amendments strengthen contingency planning and resilience testing

Stay up to date on changes and amendments to Payments Canada’s rules and by-laws.

Payments Canada, in consultation with our members and stakeholders, updates its rules, standards and by-laws where necessary to ensure the secure and efficient operation of Canada’s payment systems. Rules and standards lay out the roles, responsibilities and obligations of our member financial institutions on the appropriate handling of payment items exchanged, cleared and settled via our payment systems.

Rules, standards and by-laws are reviewed and, if necessary, amended through processes that involve Payments Canada members, the Bank of Canada, the Payments Canada Board, the Department of Finance and Department of Justice, as required.

Full versions of amendments and rules and more information of the rules process are available on our rules and documentation webpage.

Key updates this quarter include:

• Rule F7: F7 was revised to clarify timing for new versions of the Financial institution file (FIF) during statutory holidays on Thursdays and Fridays. This update provides clearer guidance on holiday impacts on the availability of the FIF.
• Rules B9 and G9: These rules have been amended to reduce required manual balancing tests from twice to once a year. This change allows financial institutions and the Bank of Canada to focus on new contingency measures  designed to improve the management of payment system outages.
• Rule G3: Adjustments below $5 million for government payments will now use the "Unqualified" ACSS stream (U).
• Rules A1, A4, A5, A6, A9, A10: These administrative changes were made to ensure accuracy and consistency in ACSS rules. Changes include minor grammatical corrections and clarifications.
• Lynx Rule 11: This rule was updated to require annual testing at a third site, alongside other resiliency and continuity testing. New provisions are also included for testing future Lynx MX syntax changes.
• Lynx Rule 12: With these changes, Lynx Rule 12 now mandates regular updates from participants if an incident affects payment processing, aligning it with similar ACSS requirements for better incident management.

To learn more about Payments Canada’s rules, by-laws and the amendment or development process, please visit our rules and documentation webpage.